An Act of Love Page 21

  “No, you’re not alone.”

  “Yes, I am,” Emily insisted, her voice low and even and defeated. “You’ve chosen Bruce and Owen. I’m alone now, and I will be for the rest of my life.”

  Linda’s throat twisted. It was Dr. Travis who spoke.

  “Sometimes situations seem hopeless. And sometimes that’s all right. Sometimes we need to stand back and let our mysterious minds sort things through for us. We all know by now that there are no instant changes. Unlike television situation comedies, we can’t find the solution to our problems in half an hour. Sometimes …”

  Linda listened, desperately wanting to cross the room and grab Emily’s hands and hold them tightly, tightly, so she would stop tearing at herself. But she did not move. The group began to discuss another family, and other problems, and finally broke for the night. The patients brought out desserts: sugar cookies cut in Christmas shapes and iced and decorated with silver balls and red and green sugar. Linda took a cup of coffee and a cookie and went to sit next to her daughter, who was still slumping next to Bill, engrossed in ripping another nail.

  “Want a cookie, darling?” she asked.

  Emily didn’t reply.

  Linda took a bite, and as if Emily were a baby, made an exaggerated noise of appreciation. “Mmmm. Did you help make these? They’re awfully good.” It had worked last week with the gingerbread. Emily had talked, then.

  Tonight she didn’t reply.

  Linda pulled a metal folding chair around so she could face Emily. Emily and Bill. Bill didn’t seem to show any signs of leaving them to themselves for a private talk, and finally Linda said, “Emily, I can’t leave here tonight knowing you feel so abandoned by me. Sweetheart, you have always been the most important person in my life. You always will be.”

  Emily did not respond.

  Linda went on, thinking her way through it all. “Dr. Travis is right. Sometimes solutions don’t come as fast as we’d like. And this … this business with Bruce is profoundly difficult. It will take a long time to untangle. But Emily, Owen does love you. And I do love you. You must know that.”

  Emily did not look up.

  “I’ll tell you one thing I can do. I can spend Christmas with you. Christmas Eve and Christmas day.”

  Emily looked up. Linda saw the eagerness in her eyes, and her heart lunged with an answering hope.

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Travis about it tomorrow. I’ll take a room at the Academy Inn, and if you can leave the hospital, you can come stay with me, and if you want to stay here, that’s fine, too, and we’ll have our own little celebration. We’ll go out for dinner. See some movies together. What do you think?”

  Emily nodded. “Okay.”

  Linda felt almost as exhilarated and exhausted as she had after giving birth to Emily. “Okay.” The other parents were leaving. Patients were drifting out of the dining room. “I’d better go, darling. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She hugged Emily good-bye. Emily did not return the hug, but neither did she recoil. That was something.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Emily murmured into Linda’s shoulder.

  “Oh, Emily, I love you,” Linda said. And for once she left the hospital feeling just a little optimistic.

  “Christmas Eve and Christmas Day?” Owen said, incredulous.

  “Owen, what would you have me do?” Linda stared at the boxes of tea in the pantry. Herbal or Hu-Kwa? She was tired from the drive home, from the emotional evening with the Family Group at the hospital, her head ached and ached from thinking about all this, and she knew she should drink herbal, the other would keep her awake at night, but she didn’t want the listlessness of herbal tea, she wanted something robust and hot inside her.

  Behind her, Owen was talking. “First of all, I think you should have been a little less precipitate. You should have asked Dr. Travis whether or not she thinks it is a good idea. You might have asked my opinion. You might have considered me. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, why promise both? Why not spend one day with her and one with me? This way, Linda, I hate to say it, but you’ve let her manipulate you exactly as she wants.”

  Linda poured the boiling water over the tea. Steam rose around her. She wished it would rise and rise, enclosing her in a cloud. She turned to her husband.

  “I can’t talk about this tonight,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m so tired, Owen. I’m overloaded. I’m going to take my tea and stare at the television.”

  “I thought we were having a discussion here.”

  “Yes, well, I’m taking your advice. I’m going to sleep on the matter before we talk about it some more. I won’t be so precipitate again.” She was amazed at how bitchy she sounded. She was amazed at how it didn’t bother her at all. As she left the room, she could feel Owen’s anger blossoming behind her like a dark cloud.

  The administration building of Westhurst College had once been a summer “cottage” for a New York multimillionaire named, appositely, Banks. At the turn of the century Mr. Banks and his wife and children retreated to the relative coolness of the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts, but by the 1970s his heirs had found their own vacation spots, and so they sold the building and grounds to the trustees of the newly created liberal arts school. The great red barn was renovated with skylights and wooden floors and turned into studios. Modern, and not particularly attractive, dorms were built around the circumference of the campus, and miniature replicas of the main building with all its Gothic arches were erected to house theaters, auditoriums, and classrooms.

  The founders of Westhurst had been progressive, optimistic, and full of revolutionary ideas about education. Westhurst did not require its students to take basic core courses of science, math, English composition, and history, but did offer those courses in case students wanted to take them. Mostly students concentrated on their particular interest in art—sculpting, painting, acting, composing or performing music, writing fiction. Over the years some of their graduates had achieved prominence in their fields. For every student who gained admittance to Westhurst, twelve applied. It was a popular place.

  Bruce knew all this, and it made him nervous. He had great grades, but in courses that didn’t matter here: math, biology, Latin, computer science, physics. But he wanted to go here. He really wanted to go here. Alison was going here, and he wanted to be near her.

  He sat now in the waiting room of the admissions office, trying not to look apprehensive. His appointment was at three o’clock. It was two forty-five. His father had picked him up at Hedden after his noon class and driven him here, bringing along a bag of McDonald’s hamburgers and fries to eat on the way. Nervous, Bruce had stuffed it all in his mouth, chewing to relieve his tension, and now the food sat in his stomach like a ball of lead. He felt ill.

  He’d worn the wrong clothing. It had been a hard call this morning, deciding what to wear, and finally he’d taken the more conservative approach. What every guy wore to a college interview: gray flannels, button-down white shirt, blue blazer, school tie, loafers. Now he was painfully aware of the other guys waiting to be interviewed. One had a shaved head, tattoos, earrings, and a ring through his nose. The other was a flaming gay man with a magenta silk shirt worn long and loose over wide silky trousers. Those two would be admitted just for their looks, Bruce thought miserably.

  “Dad?” he asked in a whisper.

  Owen looked up from his book.

  “Should I take off my tie? Unbutton my shirt?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Owen replied. “Listen, this school is always praising itself for its diversity. You can be their token conservative.”

  “Dad, I’m not conservative. You know that.”

  “Not politically. But compared to others …”

  “Thanks,” Bruce retorted. “That’s just what I needed to hear right now.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Owen assured him.

  But Bruce was not so sure. Then a door opened and a young woman came out, her batik garments fluttering. An older wom
an stood in the doorway.

  “Bruce McFarland?” She smiled.

  “Break a leg,” Owen said. “Break both of them.”

  Bruce followed the woman into her office. She reached out to shake his hand. “Hi. I’m Annie Sebelius. Sit down, please.”

  At least the room looked ordinary. Paneled in wood, shelves and desk stacked with catalogues and files, a normal office chair for Bruce and one for the admissions officer. What should he call her? Ms. Sebelius? Or Annie, because this was supposed to be such a relaxed atmosphere? Bruce tried to slouch a bit in his seat.

  “I see you’re at Hedden,” the woman said. She was petite, very blond, with pale blue eyes surrounded by rays of wrinkles. “How do you like it there?”

  He was prepared for this and answered honestly. “I like it a lot. Great teachers. A good solid foundation, intellectually, but a liberal philosophy in general.”

  “We’ve never had an applicant from Hedden before,” the woman said. “Now, this year, suddenly, we have not one, but two.”

  “You must mean Alison Cartwright.”

  “You’re friends?”

  He hoped he wasn’t blushing. “Yes. Good friends. She’s an excellent pianist.”

  Annie Sebelius scribbled something on a pad. What the hell is that? Bruce wondered. He sat up straighter, anxious. He hated women like this, who were superficially friendly but privately judgmental.

  Annie Sebelius opened a folder, studied it, then looked up at Bruce, smiling. “And what is your special artistic interest?”

  He’d tried to be prepared for this question, too. “Well, my father is a novelist. My stepmother is a novelist. And my mother is an artist. She makes dioramas, she’s pretty well known. Michelle Lourier?”

  Ms. Sebelius blinked and shifted in her chair. She smiled a terrible little smile. “Yes, Bruce, I see that on your application. But we’re not interested in admitting your parents to Westhurst.” Her voice was ever so gently sarcastic when she emphasized the word “parents.” “We want to know what your artistic specialty is.”

  Bruce took a deep breath. “I know I’ve concentrated on the sciences in high school, but this year I’ve begun to realize that I really want to focus on the arts.” He tried to look abashed. “I kind of hate to admit it, but … I think I want to be a novelist.”

  Annie Sebelius stared at him, pursing her lips in odd little jerks. She looked like a goldfish with a bone stuck in her lips.

  “Have you published a short story in your school literary review, or written anything for the school newspaper?”

  He shifted on his chair. “Not yet. Like I said, I’m just now realizing what I want to do.”

  “Which authors do you admire the most?” she asked.

  Bruce opened his mouth to respond and went blank. He couldn’t think of one single writer. “Well, uh, we’re reading Whitman in American lit—”

  “Contemporary. Someone the school hasn’t chosen for you.”

  His hands were sweating. He wiped his palms on his thighs. Desperately, he changed tack. “I’m also thinking, uh, I’m really good at computers, you know? And I really want to do computer graphics. The art you can do on those things is amazing.” He was warming up to his topic, he was on the right road now. This was something he could talk about with confidence.

  “I’m not sure we at Westhurst would call the images generated on computers artistic,” Sebelius said. Again that smug sarcasm tinged her words.

  “Look, maybe you don’t know it, but computer graphics are a thriving industry!”

  She interrupted him. “I’m sure they are. I just don’t think Westhurst is the right place to study them. If study is the appropriate word.”

  She was rejecting him. She had rejected him already. In just minutes, he’d lost his opportunity.

  “You’re not even giving me a chance!” he protested.

  Annie Sebelius looked shocked. “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, shit! What kind of admissions officer are you? Your mind was made up before I entered this room. You’ve decided you don’t want me, and nothing I can do will change your mind.”

  She smiled and leaned forward now, her tone earnest. “Well, Bruce, look at your application. The courses and extracurriculars you’ve taken at Hedden. I really can’t see how—”

  “It’s not that you can’t see, it’s that you won’t.” She was going to discard him without a second thought. Throw his application in the wastebasket and turn her back on him. Shut him out of this world forever. “Who gives you the right to be God?” he asked. “Who says you have the right to pick and choose and ruin lives? You’re just a fucking withered old ice queen bitch goddess, you—”

  “Is everything all right in here?”

  Bruce turned. A man in a gray suit stood in the doorway. Bruce’s father stood right behind him, face grim. Bruce suddenly realized that he was standing, leaning on the desk toward Annie Sebelius, who was cowering back in her chair.

  Now she rose. “We’re finished.”

  “No!” Bruce cried. “Wait a minute. Give me another chance. Please. What do you want me to do?” His hands ripped at his tie, yanking it open. “You want alternative? I can do alternative. You want me to write a short story? I can do that.”

  “Bruce.” Owen had come into the room and now put his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “Come on, son. We’ve got to leave.”

  “But, Dad! It’s not fair! She won’t even give me a chance! She totally dissed me!”

  “Bruce.”

  “No! Goddamnit!” Bruce yanked his arm away from his father’s grasp. Turning to Ms. Sebelius, who stood wide-eyed behind the desk, he said, “Well, fuck you! Fuck you and this whole damned fucking school!” With one sweeping blow, he sent a stack of folders flying to the floor.

  “Mr. McFarland, do I need to call security?” Ms. Sebelius asked. Her voice was still cool.

  Owen hooked his arm around Bruce’s neck and squeezed slightly, pulling Bruce off balance. Pulling him toward the door. “I’m sorry,” he said to Ms. Sebelius. Bruce was walking sideways, tripping over his own feet, aware of people in the waiting room staring at him, aware that people had even come out of their offices to stare at him as if he were some kind of freak show. Owen continued to pull him along. They went out through a heavy door and suddenly were in the silent well of the back staircase.

  “Let me go, Dad,” Bruce said.

  “Get hold of yourself, Bruce,” Owen replied and released his son.

  They stood there, the two men, surrounded by gray plaster, gray linoleum, gray metal railings on the stairs. They looked at each other.

  “Dad,” Bruce began, and broke into tears.

  Owen wrapped his arms around his son and let him cry.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Late Friday afternoon Linda was wearing moccasins, and as she came down the stairs her steps made no sound. She entered the kitchen and saw through the door opening into Owen’s study Celeste standing there, her hands caressing the old soft leather of Owen’s desk chair, her face grave with wistfulness.

  It was an intimate moment. Linda meant to slip away, to enter the kitchen again, making enough noise to alert Celeste, but just at that moment Celeste looked up and saw Linda.

  Startled, Celeste cried out. “What are you doing here?” She whipped her hands off the chair.

  “I live here,” Linda replied, slightly amused.

  “I thought you were going with Owen. To take Bruce to his interview.”

  Linda stared. Celeste did not need to know that just that morning Linda and Owen had fought bitterly because Linda refused to go with him to pick up Bruce and drive him to his interview at Westhurst.

  “I’m too angry with Owen right now,” she’d said. “Too confused. How can I stop thinking about Emily? Besides, I would think that my presence would only make him nervous, and today he needs to be totally confident.”

  So at noon Owen had gone off on his own in the old Volvo. Linda had come as far as the door with him, where
she’d said, “Owen. Wish Bruce good luck for me.”

  She’d gone to her study then, and worked, coming down only for lunch, and for a fresh cup of coffee.

  Now Linda thought: how perfectly Celeste-like Celeste was being. Caught intruding, she thought it was her right to grill Linda rather than offer an explanation of her own.

  “Is there something you need?” Linda asked pointedly. She took a few steps toward the study door.

  Celeste shrugged. “Owen told me about an article in Outside magazine. About traveling through the Southwest. I thought I might take a trip in January.”

  Linda knew the article Celeste meant: hints for women traveling alone. She softened. “His magazines and journals are over on the long table,” she said, silently adding, as you know as well as I. “I was just going to make a fresh pot of coffee. Want some?”

  “Sure.”

  Linda made the coffee. Celeste came out of Owen’s study with a magazine in her hand. With awkward amiability they sat down together at the kitchen table.

  “Ready for Christmas?” Linda asked.

  “Hardly. You?”

  “I’ve got some gifts. I did a mall run last week.”

  “When are you putting your tree up?” Celeste asked.

  “I don’t know.” Linda sighed and ran her hands through her hair. “Owen and I always go out in the woods to cut one. But we haven’t had a chance even to think about it this year.”

  “Yeah,” Celeste said, stirring sugar into her coffee. “This business with Emily and her rape fantasy must be overwhelming.”

  Linda stared at Celeste. “Owen told you?”

  “Oh, shit.” Celeste flinched and grinned. “I wasn’t supposed to let you know.” She couldn’t hide the fact that she was very pleased that she and Owen had shared a secret.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Just since the bears. He’s tremendously upset, Linda.”

  “We all are.”

  “Yes, but … Linda, he cried. I haven’t seen Owen cry since he was a child.”